


Pass Me My Phone

by turante



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-21 02:43:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10676049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/turante/pseuds/turante
Summary: Five times Sherlock asked John to get his phone from his pockets, and the one time the phone wasn’t there.





	Pass Me My Phone

**I**

They were at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital’s lab and Sherlock was examining the mud of the shoes. “Pass me my phone.”

“Where is it?” John asked, strangely enough he didn’t put Sherlock’s laziness among his list of flaws.

“Jacket.” Sherlock answered as if it were completely obvious.

John marched over to him and looking at the ceiling stuck a hand into his right pocket to retrieve the mobile.

“Careful!” exclaimed the other man to his lack of gentleness, and he stopped for an instant, then continued like before. He got the job done, and that was enough for Sherlock.

**II**

The following time Sherlock was busy working on his laptop, sitting at the kitchen table.

“John?” He enquired, and the grunt coming from the sofa was an answer enough. “Could you get me my phone?”

“Can’t you take it yourself?”

“I’m busy.”

Then silence for a minute and finally John gave up, getting on his feet and strolling towards the kitchen. “Where have you left it this time?”

“Other pocket,” Sherlock replied hermetically.

John shrugged and walked to Sherlock’s left, then pulled his jacket a bit away from his body and picked up the phone.

“Here you are,” he said, handing the mobile to Sherlock’s proffered hand. “Is that my blog?!” He asked then, looking at the open comment box Sherlock was typing into.

“Yes, you needed to be corrected about a few facts.” The detective replied, continuing what he was doing and finally sending his comment with a flourish of his wrist.

“You do know that I was in the living room, right?”

“Of course.”

John gives up understanding him.

**III**

They were just getting back their breath after having run completely across Hyde Park after a suspect and John was bent double trying to remember a time when breathing didn’t hurt his lungs. 

“John... can you... my pocket.” He struggled to string together his words. “Must... text Lestrade.”

John turned to observe him. “You are kidding.” Sherlock’s expression was serious and concentrated, even as he was flushed and out of breath. “You’re serious.” He exclaimed, then straightened himself and questioned his own sanity. He put a gloved hand in Sherlock’s coat pocket.

“Not in the coat...” he closed his eyes and put his hands to his temples. As he got his breath back he excluded all sounds to concentrate and recall the licence plate of the scooter the suspect had escaped on.

John rolled his eyes and carefully opened Sherlock’s coat, he didn’t want people to get the wrong idea. Not that anything he did seemed to make a difference.

He searched both jacket’s pockets and didn’t find his mobile. “Sherl...”

“Shhht!” Sherlock shushed him, so John concentrated on his options. He wouldn’t try the pants unless he had exhausted all the other options. Like asking Sherlock to do it himself, since they were in public.

He opened Sherlock’s jacket and saw the shape of his mobile in the shirt pocket. He smiled to himself and got it out. “Do you want me to type the text to Lestrade?” he offered in a bout of kindness.

The detective opened his eyes and smiled at John, “No, it’s ok. I’ve remembered.” He took the mobile that John was offering him and started typing.

**IV**

When John got back from being politely kidnapped by Mycroft Sherlock was busy in the kitchen, most certainly not cooking dinner. 

Crystal meth? Highly possible.

Dinner? Damn next to impossible.

“Can you please pass me my phone now?” asked Sherlock, a note of impatience in his voice. Maybe he hadn’t noticed he had gone out, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“This is becoming a habit,” answered John, but as he said it he reached Sherlock in the kitchen.

The man shrugged. He was wearing only his suit pants and his shirt sleeves were rolled back to his elbows.

He was looking at a watch set on the counter beside a notepad and stirring continuously a foul-smelling substance.

The question ‘what is that?’ was burning through John’s mind, but he really didn’t have enough courage to ask. He was safer not knowing. And probably a lot happier as well.

He didn’t have many options this time. He couldn’t stand in front of Sherlock, so he stopped behind him and reached a hand to his chest. No phone there.

“Sherlock... I’m not sticking a hand in your trousers,” he announced. It was a bit too late now, but he was due to set some boundaries. At some point.

“Please. Can’t you see I’m busy?” he changed stirring hand and jotted down some cramped notes in shorthand.

John asked himself why he kept doing this. He kept enabling him, and it was all working against him.

“Which pocket?” he asked, a bit embarrassed now.

“Front right. Wait,” he finished scribbling and straightened his spine, then turned to grab a vial filled with a transparent liquid.

Still, John didn’t want to know.

He put just the tip of his fingers in the pocket, to search for the hard plastic form of the mobile phone. It was a deep pocket. He cursed a bit under his breath, sure that the other man wouldn’t even notice it, and lowered his fingers until he could grab the phone. He got it out carefully.

“Good, can you snap a picture of it and send it to a number I will dictate you?” asked Sherlock, and John did what he said.

When he was in the living room and bent to pick up a book Sherlock must have thrown he felt his own mobile in his pocket. Couldn’t he just have used it?

**V**

They left Lestrade’s office and Sherlock was happy and excited like a child on Christmas morning. He was smiling and the smile almost reached his eyes. John had a box full of evidence in his hands and Sherlock held two. More were being sent to Baker Street to be examined by the consultant. They got in the elevator and they were alone. 

“John, the button,” the brunette reminded him, he was eager to get started to sort through all those dossiers and case files and photos to find the link that had eluded Lestrade for months by then.

The doctor put his box down and leaned over to push the button for the ground floor.

“Ah, John, John. I’ve been longing for a case like this,” he said, his voice a bit dreamlike.

Watson grunted a bit and leaned back against the wall.

They hadn’t reached the ground floor yet, but the elevator stopped anyway.

“What?”

The light flickered and died, and then a safety lamp came to life, offering a pale glow.

“Power shortage,” decided Sherlock, managing to sound a little less bored than usual as he said it.

John pushed the button for help, but it didn’t work. Then he fished in his jacket’s pocket and pulled out his mobile.

No signal, obviously.

“Sherlock... is your phone working?” he asked, and the other man tried to shrug under the weight of the boxes.

“How can I know?”

“Fish it out and look.”

“Can’t right now. Busy.” He answered, shifting his hold on the boxes so that he could not accidentally lose anything.

“Get the boxes down,” he suggested.

“There isn’t enough room to bend properly to put them down and pick them back up afterwards. I don’t want to sprain a muscle or get a hernia.”

John knew he couldn’t fight Sherlock’s logic, but the temptation to smack him on the head was getting stronger right now.

“Ok, I guess I’m used to this right now,” he told himself rather than Sherlock, who was busy starting to read the topmost file in John’s box.

He stepped beside Sherlock and started checking his coat’s pockets.

“Can you move, I can’t read,” complained the man as he tried to check his left pocket, one hand under the boxes.

“It’s not easy. Or pleasant, Sherlock. And from here I can inflict you quite a bit of pain, should I finally succumb to the urge.”

“I’m pleased that my influence has expanded your vocabulary,” the tall man replied, oblivious to the threat of physical pain.

“Why do I put up with you?” asked the other, now checking the jacket’s left pocket. “Do you at least care to tell me where is your phone before I sprain something playing standing twister with you and the boxes?”

Sherlock didn’t catch the reference but answered his question. “I have no idea.”

John thought he must be lying. He should be able to feel the weight of the phone on him, surely? But he said nothing and checked the other jacket’s pocket. Empty.

Sherlock was wearing a shirt without pockets that day, so that left his pants. Again.

Thank God that the cameras were off along with the power of both lift and emergency phone.

He thought of England and reached inside Sherlock’s front right pocket.

“Oh, the back pocket! I remember! I don’t use it often because it makes it a bit uncomfortable to sit.”

He could have remembered a couple of seconds earlier, thought John, removing his hand from the pocket as the lights went back on.

“I guess we don’t need your phone anymore,” said Watson, a tiny bit relieved, and a bit embarrassed.

“Apparently.”

The lift descended another floor and a half and stopped at the atrium.

John picked up his box and held it in front of him.

**VI**

John entered the lab trying to be as stealthy as he could. 

Sherlock had known he was there somehow (he hadn’t considered hiding from Molly in the corridors, so it was his fault) and had called him gently.

“John, can you pass me my phone?”

The soldier sighed. “Where is it?”

“Jacket.”

He smiled and walked to the man that was playing God with a Petri dish, various bacteria and round paper strips of different antibiotics.

It didn’t bother him at all to feel the heavy silk of the suit, because this time Sherlock’s coat was not on him but on abandoned on a stool next to the man. He searched both pockets and looked for hidden ones. He could not find the phone.

“The phone’s not here,” he said, shrugging.

“Odd. I thought I put it in my right pocket when I left, this morning. Didn’t you see me?”

“Yes, but I don’t remember.”

“That’s because you don’t observe, John.” He placed a strip of antibiotic soaked paper next to the centre of the Petri dish, then picked up another one with a P10 on it.

“Yes, it’s true, yet I can get my own phone and know where it is at all times.”

“At all times?” Sherlock actually joked, implying nightly escapades with John’s smartphone.

“Make fun of me, go on.” John put his hand in Sherlock’s trousers pocket and founding the right one to be empty, pinched the consultant detective on the thigh.

“Ow!” Sherlock jumped a bit but managed not to overthrow his current experiment. “A man’s alibi depends on the results of this test. I would be careful if I were you.”

John shrugged and after walking behind the man tried the other pocket.

Empty as well.

Sherlock suddenly grabbed his wrist. “Don’t,” he said simply, but with a serious voice. He put down the tweezers and the second Penicillin disc, then turned away from his experiment to look at John in the eyes.

“Ehm, Sherlock?”

“Yes?” The man asked calmly now.

“Where is your phone?”

They stared at each other for a few seconds, then Molly opened the door (nowhere near as stealthily as John had) and entered the lab, holding Sherlock’s mobile proudly in one upraised hand.

“You dropped your phone in the... corridor...” she started saying, lowering her voice to a whisper because neither John nor Sherlock had moved a muscle.

Sherlock let John’s wrist go and exclaimed. “Oh good, Molly, thanks. You’re a saviour. Listen, I’ve a tiny favour to ask you...”

John had seen how Molly had blushed at the thought of having walked in on them... well, having a rather intimate moment, and mentally cursed the universe. That was why everyone kept getting the wrong impression about them.

Sherlock didn’t even have the decency to blush, but John was too flustered to notice.

Molly left and Sherlock picked up his phone, looked at John and with a smile put it in the last pocket the doctor had checked.


End file.
